Professor John Robertson OBA
Today we read:
THE project to build seven new loch class ferries for the west of Scotland has reached another construction milestone. The first vessel has had its keel laid, the base upon which all units are assembled, while the steel has been cut for the second vessel. A ceremony to mark both events recently took place at Remontowa Shipbuilding S.A. shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, where the boats are being built for Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL). The small vessel replacement programme will deliver seven fully electric ferries in the first phase, providing improved reliability and resilience for lifeline ferry services across the Clyde and Hebrides network. https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/25719897.new-ferry-construction-programme-reaches-milestone-poland/
On 11 October 2025, the GMB joined with Labour, the Herald [above] and BBC Scotland as they tried to detract from the SNP Conference.
The GMB had clearly forgotten how little they can trust Labour.
By Liz S
Anas Sarwar tweeted this on 28 September 2025 :
“So much for Stronger for Scotland…. More like SNP – Stronger for Poland. This is a huge blow to Scottish shipbuilding. Once again, jobs and investment going abroad on the SNP’s watch”
This was in relation to the news that “Ferguson ship yard misses out on new CaLMac Ferry order” as headlined on the BBC website, of course it was.
Yet I saw on WGD a commentator, Legerwood, add a comment and a link onto that site that stated this:
“Yet when Labour were in power, along with the LibDems, in Holyrood they awarded a contract for 2 boats to a Polish Yard and Fergusons lost out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4185082.stm
The BBC article stated :
“A row has reopened over the Scottish Executive’s decision to award two shipbuilding contracts to a Polish yard earlier this month”.
“The SNP has obtained a letter which it claims proves the executive could have backed Ferguson of Port Glasgow”
Once again with Sarwar it is a case of “Do as I (we) say not as I (we) do’.
Of course we all know how Sarwar promised he and his Labour party would be “Stronger for Grangemouth refinery workers” and then he and his party let them down aka betrayed them after the 2024 GE.
This was a “huge blow” for those workers, and the Grangemouth area and also for “Scotland” too. As “once again” Labour let Scotland down under Sarwar’s “watch” as the so called Labour leader in Scotland.
Labour have been letting Scotland down for too long.
Vote SNP in 2026 as a first step to making it all stop.
The GMB can no more trust Labour UK to protect jobs in Wales than it will in Scotland:
Allan Gemmell OBE is the Labour MP for the Central Ayrshire constituency, his suitability to fully represent the constituents is cast into serious doubt by emerging facts.
Gemmell was born in the constituency, and much is being made of that, but since that time he has been identified much more strongly with the Johnson Conservative UK Government’s interests and those of the British Council in India. Regardless of birth, he is a classic ‘helicoptered-in’ candidate, imposed on local Labour members and at the expense of two local and respected alternatives, by a now fully right-wing Labour leadership, in a tradition running from Blair, through Brown, to Sir Keir Starmer.
However, this is not the worst of it.
Today we hear of Tata Steel’s decision to close blast furnaces in Wales with the loss of 2 800 jobs, ‘to cut carbon emissions’, at the same time as they open a huge new blast furnace in India. This clear hypocrisy and evidence of a lack of any real loyalty to its UK workers, is both hypocritical and deeply ungrateful, in the light of £1.25 billion of grants to Tata steel promised by the UK Government in December 2023, to help with decarbonisation.
The GMB union has angrily rejected Tata Steels plans.
What has this to do with Gemmell?
In addition to proudly declaring himself a ‘proud GMB member’ in social media and with his campaign clearly supported in published material, and presumably funded to some extent by them, Gemmell has a history of uncritically working to promote economic activity by India corporations in the UK.
From 2020 until May 2023, Gemmell was the His Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for South Asia and the British Deputy High Commissioner for Western India, appointed by Johnson (?). He was awarded OBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours list ‘for services to arts and science.’
While in this role, he often supported trade missions by business groups from the UK, ‘on the ground’ in India, to meet with leading Indian businesses including Tata Group.
In 2018, when Gemmell was Director India of the British Council, Tata funded his entry in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
After Brexit, Gemmell played a major role in facilitating a trade deal with India, trumpeting the Tory myth of the ‘UK now being free to create its own trade policies’, which has now been exposed by the job losses in Wales as spectacularly unsuccessful, from a UK point of view. He even enthused about the opportunities for the UK in India’s defence sector.
The Indian Airforce flies no UK-built Typhoon fighter jets but does have thousands of French and Russian models. The Indian Navy has one or two older Russian or French submarines but has built all of the hundreds of other vessels in India!
To finish, when Gemmell became His Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for South Asia in 2020, he should have known how things would go with Tata, post-Brexit. In 2016, Tata, with its major market for steel in the EU, had already announced plans to shut all UK steel operations.
A loyal representative of the Conservative Government and placeman for Sir Keir.
Amidst fake indignation over the loss of the new ferries contract to a Polish shipyard and attempts to blame the SNP for what the media and the opposition parties have done to the reputation of a Scottish shipyard, the fairness of the competition has to be questioned.
In November 2008, BBC UK reported:
The European Commission has ordered Poland to reclaim more than 3bn euros of state subsidies paid to two shipyards which were facing bankruptcy. The move means Poland will have to sell the Gdynia and Szczecin yards, putting some 60,000 jobs at risk. The commission said the subsidies were unfair on other EU shipbuilders and has promised to help anyone made redundant.1
In January 2018, Safety4Sea reported:
In September 2016, Poland adopted a law giving shipyards operating in Poland an option to pay a 1% flat-rate tax on sales from the building and conversion of ships, instead of paying the generally applicable corporate or personal income tax. Thus, shipyards paid less tax than under the normal corporate income tax (19% on taxable income) or personal income tax regime (18% or 32% on taxable income for natural persons, or 19% for entrepreneurs).
The Commission investigated the proposed tax incentive for shipyards after Poland notified the measure to the Commission in December 2016. The Commission does not question Poland’s right to decide on its tax system. However, under the EU Treaty the Commission has to verify that the tax system respects EU State aid rules and does not selectively favour certain companies over others, the Commission noted.2
How important might subsidies like the above have been in the recent decision?
The Ferguson bid for the SVRP is understood to have ranked well for quality but missed out due to the difficulties in matching overseas yards on cost.
Chief financial officer David Dishon said: “We are very proud of our bid and although we priced it competitively, we were up against extremely tough competition from yards outside the UK which benefit from significantly reduced operating costs and advanced capital investment programmes.3
The very job for BBC Scotland’s Disclosure team?
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 